


Songs On A Spider's Web

by commoncomitatus



Category: The New Legends of Monkey (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multi, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 06:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17441774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: In a world where gods have two soulmarks, three are born with only one.Or: three very different paths to the same destination.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Needed a(nother) break from my never-ending WIP O'Doom, and this... pretty much came out of nowhere.
> 
> Full disclosure: I don't actually go here. Seriously. I know literally nothing about soulmate AUs, but there were a couple of really interesting ones posted in this fandom a while ago that got my creative gears turning, and I saw the dual-soulmark thing mentioned somewhere as an example of the genre, so here we are. Apologies if I've broken any rules in this particular corner of fandom, I really have no idea what I'm doing.

***

They said it was the one thing, above all others, that made the gods special.

Separated them from the humans, stumbling blindly through their lives with no idea what was coming or what their futures might hold. Separated them from the demons, too, with all their bitterness and spite and their jealous cruelty. They didn’t deserve the gift of foresight, the Master said. They hadn’t earned the right to see what lay in store for them, to map out their lives according to their fate. They didn’t deserve the gifts of the gods.

The demons didn’t like that one bit, of course. Even now, in the relative peace of the Jade Mountain, there were rumblings of rebellion and revolution, mutterings of dissent among the demon masses. Only talk, of course, idle and stupid, but...

Monkey, of course, didn’t care.

Two names for everyone. One good and one bad. Like anything could really be that simple, even to the greatest of gods.

The first, the good, your soulmate. A lover, a mentor, a partner. Sometimes none of those things, sometimes all of them at once; it was different for everyone. The person who was meant to inspire and ignite your world, turn it upside-down and make everything perfect.

(Like he cared, anyway, like he even wanted that.)

The other, the bad, your worst enemy. The person you were meant to hate above and beyond all others. The one who was meant to despise you too, who would bring out the worst in you and twist you up inside, if you let them. The greatest threat most gods would ever face, and the thing that kept most of them awake at night.

The first, the good, in glittering gold. The other, the bad, in letters as red and bold as blood. It wasn’t exactly subtle, the fate thing.

Monkey, of course, was unique. Always had been, and in this as much as anything else. In the first, he only had one soulmark to speak of, and in the second it was neither gold nor red. It was cool to the touch, a faded sort of ash grey, a single name scrawled in frenzied letters across his right wrist. No glimmer of gold, no splash of blood. Just a single stone-coloured scribble.

The other gods looked at it — at him — with curiosity and suspicion. Monkey just shrugged and repeated his age-old mantra: that he didn’t care.

What was so weird about it, anyway, having one mark instead of two? After all, it made perfect sense for a unique-in-every-way sort of god like himself. Some gods were just born to be loved by all and hated by none; why would he have two marks when it was obvious no-one would ever be stupid enough to be his enemy?

“That’s not how it works,” Gwen told him, rather haughtily. “And even if it were, your mark would be gold. Not…” She wrinkled her nose. “… _that_.”

Monkey ignored her, of course. What did she know about it, anyway? Always stumbling along with her head in a scroll, frantically scribbling down lessons from the Master like she thought she could become the best if she studied hard enough. Like she really believed she’d ever be able to beat _him_. Like he hadn’t defeated her the last two-dozen times they sparred.

She was jealous. It was obvious. Not that he could blame her for it, really. A god with only one soulmark, fated to be loved and never hated. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that?

And then, at last, he met him. Pretty eyes and a pretty smile, human and handsome and wonderful, and any doubts that might have snuck into his mind vanished like the ashy smoke of his soulmark.

 _Davari_.

And there it was, come to life like a sense awakened, the glittering gold on his wrist, the earthquake in his soul. From the moment they first met, crashing headfirst into each other in a crowded marketplace, like fate really did have its hands on them. Sparks beneath his skin, the blood turning to liquid fire in his veins, that first-touch euphoria he’d heard the other gods talk about (and laughed and rolled his eyes because _who cared?_ ). And in that moment he knew — and he watched the letters on his wrist confirm it, blooming to life and colour, gleaming gold like liquid fire — that he had found his soulmate.

For a time, it was wonderful. Better than wonderful, it was perfect. The gods on the Jade Mountain kept their distance, eyeing his mark with the same distrust as always, but Monkey knew the green glow of envy when he saw it. He’d been right all along — it was right there on his skin, spun gold for everyone to see — and they hated that. Resented him for being better than them, for being more _deserving_.

Their sulking and scowling meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. It was far too easy to laugh at them and shrug off their bitterness when his soulmate was waiting for him every day in the village below. An unlucky match, to be sure, a god and a human — an eternity for one, a fistful of decades for the other — but he had seen enough gods find and lose their human soulmates to know what to expect. To know, most importantly, that he had to cherish what little time they had.

And so they did. And, just like everything Monkey did or touched, it was glorious. He laboured up on the Jade Mountain, besting everyone he went up against, impressing even the Master, and down in the village below, in stolen, beautiful moments, Davari would whisper over and over again that he was destined for greatness, that one day he would be the most powerful of them all.

Monkey knew it was true, of course. He’d known it for decades. But it was nice to hear someone else say it for once.

*

The fate thing was prophetic in more ways than one.

Once it led him to his soulmate, once he found the one person in all the world who saw in him what he’d always seen in himself, everything else came naturally. More naturally than usual, even.

Seeing the gods on the Jade Mountain for the bitter, jealous idiots they were, inferior to him in every possible way. Recognising their resentments, their ineptitude, their foolishness. They would study the Master’s lessons a hundred times, a thousand times, and still not learn even one; Monkey would sneak away now and then to steal a glimpse, and within an hour have every breath perfected.

Lazy. Stupid. He truly was the best of them all.

Davari told him so, every opportunity he got. Monkey knew they were jealous of that as well. Gwen didn’t talk about her own soulmarks — few gods did, unless they had a reason to be proud of them — but Monkey had seen the way she looked at his, all narrowed eyes and held breath, and he could tell that she just wanted his happiness for her own. Well, who wouldn’t?

Davari called him a king. A god among gods, the greatest and the most handsome. (Monkey liked that one a lot). He told him, over and over, that he deserved more than even the Master could teach, that he could shake the foundations of the Jade Mountain itself if he chose to, that the other gods should be grateful for his mercy.

That maybe, come to think of it, _he_ should be a Master.

And a real king too. A king in truth, with a true crown.

Naturally, once the idea got into his head, it was all Monkey could think about. They talked about it so often — Davari in awe, in worship, reverent in the way that humans so often were with the gods who took them as soulmates — that he barely had a moment to forget, even if he wanted to.

Which he didn’t.

For the first time in his life, he had someone who appreciated him, who understood him, who saw his potential and nourished it, rather than blathering on about how ‘untapped’ it was.

He wasn’t going to let that feeling get away. He would realise all the potential in the world if that was what Davari wanted. He’d become a Master, a king, and everything in between. With his soulmate at his side, his name in gold on his wrist, he could do anything.

*

Then came the crown. And the Master. And the _demon_.

Monkey knew — at least, some small piece of him knew — that it was a stupid idea, that he wouldn’t prove anything to the hare-brained idiots on the Mountain by stealing a stupid crown. Knew that he was risking everything for one last shot at giving them the middle finger. He knew it was petty, knew it was dangerous, knew it would probably turn the Master against him for good.

But in that moment, if only for a moment, he didn’t care.

Wasn’t that always his problem? Up there among the clouds, surrounded by his fellow gods, with their twin soulmarks in their clashing golds and reds, hadn’t that always been his bottom line?

He didn’t care. Not about Gwen or Lior, the closest to friends he really had, not about any of the others either. About the Master, maybe, a little bit — and that was why it hurt to see him look so wounded as he saw the crown on Monkey’s head — but they’d never treated him like one of them, had never seen him as anything more than a troublemaker, a strange sort of outcast, with his impossible power and his impossible talent and his impossible one-and-only-one soulmark, his _human_ , etched onto his skin.

Who could have foreseen the Master’s death? Who could have seen the demon coming at him from behind, invisible until it was too late? Who could have known—

Not Monkey.

Not even in his wildest revenge fantasies, not even in his worst, most violent moments, frustration and fury deep enough to drown in. Not even he, the all-powerful Monkey King — a king wearing a tainted crown, suddenly much too heavy for his head — could have imagined something like _this_.

The worst part was that he never got a chance to say goodbye. Not to the Master, his soul dispersed almost before Monkey realised what was happening, and not to Davari either. His soulmate, his human, waiting in the village below with no way of knowing what had just happened.

He wanted to make the time. Wanted to say goodbye to one, even if the other was suddenly beyond his reach, but he knew he couldn’t afford it. He had a promise to keep, and even as his cloud took flight he could feel their breath on the back of his neck. The gods who had always resented him, who had always been jealous and spiteful, who had always been itching for an excuse to blame him for anything and everything. Even—

No.

Surely even _they_ wouldn’t think he was capable of _that_.

But they did.

And so he flew to the farthest corners of the world, scattering the scrolls as the Master told him to.

His mind a maelstrom, his heart a dervish, dashing from one broken piece to the other — his mentor in one moment, his soulmate in the next — and the final moments he would never get to share with either of them. Angry, upset, vengeful, chased to the end of the world and back again by the people who should have loved and respected him, who had the gall to call _him_ arrogant when they were the ones too blinded by their own jealousy to see the truth.

It didn’t protect him as well as he thought it would. Being better than them. Being faster and stronger and more talented. When they finally caught him and hauled him back to the Jade Mountain to face their biases and their judgements, when they bound and bowed and convicted him, that was all he could think: _it wasn’t supposed to be like this_. He was the god who had no enemies; it was written on his skin for all to see. He was the Monkey King, fated to be loved and never hated.

But the look on Gwen’s face as she pulled the needle-sized staff from his hair, as she moved away to start the chant that would bind him? 

Well. If that wasn’t hate, he didn’t know what was.

*

Five hundred years later, the whole world was different.

No gods, no soulmarks. Only hordes and hordes of demons.

A handful of well-meaning humans, too, fighting the good fight. Like the little monk who woke him from his endless imprisonment. A good monk, if a little pushy.

Monkey didn’t appreciate his attitude — “Monkey, do this,” and “Monkey, do that,” like he ever had or ever would bow to anyone but the Master — but he seemed to know a little of what had happened in the world, so he let him stick around long enough to explain the situation. Long enough to help him find his bearings and a centuries-overdue meal. Long enough to—

Long enough to _recruit_ him.

Dammit.

He liked the monk well enough, of course — who wouldn’t fall a little bit for the first face they’d seen in five hundred years? — but he’d had his own plans, and tagging along on some spiritual quest to help the humans reclaim the world from their demon oppressors... well, it wasn’t on the itinerary. No matter how helpful the little monk had been thus far. No matter how pretty his smile.

All he’d wanted when he burst out of his prison was to find the demon responsible for the Master’s death, to clear his name and redeem himself in the eyes of his fellow gods (and, okay, maybe rub to their faces in the fact that he was right once again), to find Davari and settle down a thousand leagues away from the Jade Mountain. So simple. 

Would have been, anyway, if he’d woken up in the right time.

Instead, he woke to a world overrun by more demons than even he could kill, nearly five centuries after his soulmate must have grown old and died.

He checked the mark straight away of course. The name was still there, _Davari_ , in its familiar scrawl, but the gold had faded again to ash and grey. Not dead — not even dead soulmates lost their glister, not even dead enemies lost their bloodstains; death had no effect on fate, after all, and some liked the memory — but faded again, like it was in the years before they met, like it was that day when Gwen gave him a know-it-all smirk and said ‘that’s not how it works’.

Well, hadn’t Monkey always been living proof of the impossible?

And here he was, five hundred years later like nothing had ever happened. Like the name had never shone at all, like he’d never sat and watched it gleam under the sun like burnished gold.

Not that it mattered. Whatever the colour, Davari had to be dead. After five hundred years and who knew how many demons, what other option was there?

Monkey sighed. He never thought he’d miss the Jade Mountain, but...

Well. A brave new world this certainly was not.

*

And then, inexplicably, there were four of them.

Him, the monk, and a couple of immortal misfits undeserving of the name ‘god’.

They didn’t interrogate him as much as he expected them to.

Tripitaka asked a little bit, eyes lighting up with curiosity when they fell on his wrists, but that was to be unexpected. Humans were always fascinated by the gods and their soulmarks, a little enthralled by the unknown and a little covetous too. Like they really believed they, with all their mortal weaknesses, would ever be able to handle having that sort of power over their own fates.

Monkey had seen the damage humans did to their own lives, even without any help. Blind and fumbling and useless, and still they managed to wreck everything they touched. Throw a shot of destiny at them, even the tiniest little piece, and the world wouldn’t know what to do with itself.

Not that it was doing so wonderfully on its own, these days. But still.

“The Scholar taught me about them,” Tripitaka said one day, gazing at Monkey’s bracers with wide, eager eyes. “A little bit, anyway. Two marks for each god. One for their eternal soulmate, one for their mortal enemy.”

Monkey grunted. Already, he didn’t like this Scholar. He sounded too much like the Master, all lessons but no real _learning_. Hearing about him made his chest tight, bitterness and nostalgia and a bite of pain, and it didn’t help at all that his name on the monk’s lips always seemed to go hand-in-hand with talk of soulmarks.

“It’s not for humans to talk about,” he said, annoyed. “Your Scholar should’ve minded his own business. And so should you.”

Pigsy, being somewhat more of an equal (if only somewhat), handled it better. He poked him about it a few times, but Monkey suspected it was more an attempt to irritate him than out of any real curiosity. He’d been around for long enough to know that a god’s soulmarks were personal, and to know better than to ask with sincerity. Still, because he was who he was, he couldn’t seem to resist the opportunity to antagonise his new friend, though he was careful to keep his voice light and playful when he did.

“So, who’s your red name?” he pressed with a sly grin. “A god like you, I bet you have plenty of enemies. Must be pretty useful, knowing which one’s gonna be the worst of the worst.”

Monkey couldn’t help himself; he flexed his big biceps.

“Actually,” he said, with just a touch of smugness, “I don’t have any enemies.”

Pigsy laughed. “ _Sure_ you don’t.”

He let it go pretty quickly, though, when Monkey started eyeing his big, leather-braced arms, clicking his tongue like he was thinking about asking a ‘playful’ question or two himself.

Funny, he thought, how easy it was to shut up a god who didn’t want his own soul-shaped secrets scrutinised.

Sandy was a different story entirely. She didn’t ask him about it often — didn’t speak often at all, really — but when she did it was with the kind of childlike eagerness he usually only saw in humans. Like he was some kind of expert on what it meant to be a god, like she didn’t understand anything and needed him to make the world simple for her. A bi-product, he supposed, of being born out of time. No-one around to explain this stuff to her, no other gods to tell her what it meant, the divinity in her blood and the names on her skin.

Assuming she even had any. He hadn’t seen her soulmarks, no more than he’d seen Pigsy’s, and when he turned her questions back at her she just stared at him blankly, like he was speaking a different language.

He was a little bit gentler with her than with Pigsy, but only a little bit, and only because she was so scattered he doubted the tough-love approach would have any effect. As soon as she touched on the personal stuff, though — not malicious, but tactless in that way she had of not recognising other people’s feelings — he grabbed her firmly by the shoulders, spun her around, and told her to go bother Pigsy instead.

She didn’t. Monkey had a feeling she’d sooner live out her life knowing nothing about being a god than have to learn about it from Pigsy. There was bad blood there, he could tell, and after what he’d learned during their time in that run-down dump of Palawa, he could see why; he wasn’t sure he’d trust the big guy himself, either, if he’d been around while he was dancing dirty between a demon’s bedsheets.

These were the people he was stuck with. A monk who kept trying to hold him to some Scholar’s standards, a god who’d switched alliances at least twice already, and one who couldn’t even lace her boots without making a study out of it. Not exactly the elite of the Jade Mountain, any of them. The gods were barely gods at all, and the monk...

Well. Monkey couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was sure something wasn’t quite right about him either.

Best not to get too close to any of them, he decided. Only an idiot set himself up to be burned twice in one lifetime.

*

For a little while, it worked like a charm.

He kept to himself, stayed aloof and authoritative, answered Tripitaka’s least annoying questions as best he could and ignored the ones that didn’t suit him. Tried to keep the other gods at arms’ length, and not just because it kept them as far away as possible from his lonely, ash-grey soulmark. Did the best he could to keep himself focused on the monk’s stupid quest: finding the scattered scrolls (ideally without thinking too hard about why they were scattered in the first place), delivering them to the resistance, and getting on with his life.

It was easy, for a time. A quiet, peaceful, glorious time.

Then they were taken to the breaking ground, and everything changed.

At first, it was just stupid. The tavern felt sort of weird, but it seemed pretty harmless overall. Lousy food and stupid games, that was the worst he could say about it, and the most he wanted to.

He would’ve happily got up and left before the whole thing even started, but the others were infectiously enthusiastic: Pigsy, who would do anything if it got him another cup or two of wine, and Sandy, who would do anything just to prove that she could do _something_. He didn’t want to be the one to ruin their fun, even if it was stupid, so he sat down, shut his mouth, and tried to enjoy the lousy snacks.

He didn’t tell them he couldn’t play the stupid game with them. He told them he was thinking, and then he told them he didn’t want to, and then he told them the simplest part of the truth, that it was stupid. Stupid and pointless, and who even cared about a centuries-dead language anyway? It was nothing he hadn’t said a million times before, all the same stuff he’d told the Master five hundred years ago, young and itching for an excuse not to learn.

This time, though, impossibly, he realised that it wasn’t really true. In spite of himself a part of him _wanted_ to play. Like he was being compelled by some outside force, like there was something in the smoke-filled tavern trying to _make_ him—

No. That was stupid. No-one _made_ the Monkey King do anything.

He shook off the feeling, and shoved another fistful of snacks into his mouth.

Then, out of nowhere, his soulmark started to burn.

He sucked in his breath, struck by the suddenness of it, a heat so fierce it threatened to sear off his bracers. He wasn’t one to show discomfort if he could help it, but it was blinding.

The others glanced at him sharply, sensing his distress. Sandy, glassy-eyed and disoriented, managed to focus on him for maybe a fraction of a second, then her parchment started calling to her again and she darted back to it like there was nothing else in the world. Pigsy, rather more shrewd even when he was pretending not to be, narrowed his eyes at Monkey’s wrist.

“All right?” he asked, in a voice that was as pointed as his look.

Monkey glared and clapped a hand over his bracer. “Fine.”

“Really? Because I’m pretty sure I heard you whimper a second ago.”

“I don’t _whimper_.”

“Yes you do,” Sandy said, not even glancing up from her scribbles. “Less talking, more writing.”

Shrugging his broad shoulders, Pigsy bowed back over his parchment.

Well, Monkey supposed, that was one thing this stupid game was good for. He’d figured out pretty early that his companions were easily distracted, but this was the first time it had worked to his advantage. Sandy was feverish, focused to the point of obsession, and while Pigsy didn’t seem quite so enthused by the effort involved, still he played the dumb game like his life depended on it. Within a few minutes, they’d both forgotten Monkey had ever made any sound at all.

Monkey wished he could forget so easily himself, but the pain in his wrist didn’t fade. It got worse as time passed, more and more intense, until it almost blinded him, filling his head with whispers and doubts, a throbbing, scorching certainty that there was something hiding in this twisted place, something he needed to see or know or learn. Something he needed to—

He turned, cutting off the unpleasant sensation before it could take root. His eyes fell on the door, shut tight and bolted, and the hazy sunset-warm glow from the world beyond. It seemed to shift, ethereal and breathtaking, gold in one moment and red in the next, like a soulmark that didn’t know what it wanted to be.

It called to him, the light, and the hidden world behind that door. Called to him as loudly, as fiercely as the letters and parchment called to Sandy, as the sweets and treats and sparkling wines called to Pigsy. It made his legs go weak, and when he tried to stand it only made them weaker.

Something else was calling too. His name, like an echo on the smoky air, scarcely audible through the cling and clamour of the tavern, the scratch of pens on parchment, the chatter of voices. His name, and the others’ too, in a high, frightened voice, a voice he was so sure he recognised—

 _Tripitaka_ , something inside of him recalled, and the light behind the door seemed to suddenly blaze like the centre of a star.

He turned back, saw the others reacting as well. Sandy was shaking like she’d been dunked in cold water, and Pigsy was grimacing, rubbing his arm as though bothered by an old wound. They looked nearly as lost as Monkey felt, but neither of them seemed inclined to do anything about it.

Down to him, then. As always.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

Sandy made a distressed sound. Her eyes rolled back in her head for a moment, then she frowned at her parchment like it was her own flesh and blood.

“I don’t...” she started, then winced as though struck with a terrible headache.

Pigsy didn’t look so good either. A little green around the gills, a little uncomfortable, and there was a peculiar sort of tension in his voice when he said, “Something’s not right.”

“You can say that again,” Monkey muttered. “This place...”

He stopped, looking at the door again. Tripitaka’s voice faded as his vision focused, dissolving until it was little more than an irritating buzz in the back of his mind. The light grew darker again, gold burning away to red, and for just a second he could’ve sworn he heard Davari’s voice, and—

And the Master’s.

His blood froze in his veins. He tried, once more, to stand.

“Monkey?”

Locking his knees under him, he turned. The tavern seemed darker than before, his eyes now accustomed to the light, the glow of gold-red-orange shining through the door; it seemed emptier, too, and quieter. Only the other two there now, both staring at him, Pigsy with a perplexed frown on his face and Sandy wild-eyed with panic. He wanted to go to them both, but at the same time he wanted to shut them up, he wanted to shove them aside, he wanted them _gone_ —

And then, in the blink of an eye, they were.

For a second — only a second — Monkey was convinced he’d done something to banish them. Maybe thought was action in this twisted place, maybe thinking of a thing was enough to make it true.

But then he heard it again, Tripikata’s voice calling his name, and some small piece of him understood. Knew where they’d gone, knew how they’d been called away; the world around him seemed to bloom with colour as the realisation struck, and in the very same instant he realised that he could not follow them.

His soulmark burned beneath his bracer. In front of him, glowing red-gold-red-gold, the door called his name like a plea.

He took a step forward.

And another.

He was aware of the tavern crumbling around him, a demon’s illusion revealed for what it was, but he didn’t care at all. Nor did he care when the demon finally revealed himself, tall and lean and well-spoken. Monkey barely glanced his way, barely heard a word he said; how could a demon understand, anyway, the call of five centuries’ worth of regrets? How could a creature with no soul possibly understand what it was like to be called back by a soulmate?

Ignoring the demon and his worthless warnings, Monkey threw open the door and stepped into his past.

*

It consumed him. Devoured him.

Might have killed him too, if not for—

 _Tripitaka_.

He lived it again, the darkest day of his life, as real and raw and visceral as the first time. The masked demon, a shadow lurking in the corner of his eye, the Master in front of him, stoic and severe, then cradled in his arms as the spirit fled his body, the rest of the gods turning on him with hatred blazing in their eyes. Everything, exactly as he remembered it.

Until it wasn’t. Until he looked down and saw the little monk at his side, and his heart — in spite of itself, in spite of everything else he was going through — lit up and stalled in his chest.

He watched himself — no, _they_ watched him, together — as he fought the demon, toe-to-toe and face-to-face, holding their breath as if they could somehow change the outcome by willing it.

They couldn’t, of course. Not even the Monkey King could do that, and certainly not in a memory. He could only watch, feeling the air pressing in on him from all sides, impossibly still, impossibly heavy, as the scene played itself out the same way it always had, the way it did five hundred years ago, the way it did every night in his dreams.

And then he was gone, the ghostly then-Monkey, leaping out of the window as though pursued by more than just his fellow gods, and it was just them: the real him, the quiet little monk, and the sneering, triumphant demon.

“Who are you?” Monkey whispered.

He expected silence, the same endless void of doubt and frustration that had haunted his every waking breath (and many of his not-so-waking ones) from the moment it happened. He’d been here so many times in his dreams and his memories, watching that black-clad figure slink off into the shadows, he could recite the next few hours from memory. He knew what was coming, knew to brace for it, to tense his whole body in anticipation of injustice, knew to prepare for—

“Look.”

And Tripitaka grabbed his wrist — the left one, the weak one, the one with no soulmark to make it strong — and the whole world changed.

Monkey blinked.

He saw, for the very first time, the crack in the demon’s mask, the sickly red glow, the threat and promise of a face hiding behind, of the _truth_ at long last, five hundred years too late.

“Follow him,” Tripitaka whispered, tugging urgently on his arm.

Monkey did, moving in a sort of semiconscious daze. His skin seemed to catch fire where the monk’s fingers touched, hot beneath his bracer, a painless mirror of the other. Strange, he thought, but now was not the time to dwell on it. Not when he was mere moments away from finding out the truth that eluded him for half a millennium.

And he did. At long last. He—

He kind of wished he hadn’t.

Eyes wide, mouth open, the pain in his soulmark reached its crescendo as he watched, as he looked, as he saw—

“ _Davari_.”

He’d said the name maybe a thousand times over the years. In hope, before they ever met, running his fingertips along the ash-grey edges of his strange, colourless soulmark; in awe, when they found each other, his head heavy and his tongue loose, warmed and loved from the inside out; in reverence, in quiet stolen moments, in gratitude, echoing the quiet whispers of his own name in an empty, hallowed room, a sanctuary just for them.

In grief, afterwards, when he thought that he was lost.

And now...

 _Now_...

Now, for the first time, in _hate_. 

He spat it out through clenched teeth, stretched it over a tongue made heavy and clumsy and wrong, snarled it and hissed it, and threw back his head and _howled_.

Tripitaka, staring up at him with wide, frightened eyes, whispered, “Who—”

Monkey let out a roar of grief — a fresh grief, one that would not be mended so easily as watching gold fade to ash — and fell to his knees.

“He was my soulmate.”

He tore the bracers off his wrists, watched with numb horror as the name began to bloom again, colour rich and deep and vibrant pouring into the faded letters like—

Like _blood_.

Tripitaka, who had spent hours upon hours talking about how much the Scholar had taught him about gods and their soulmarks, looked awed and heartbroken at the same time.

“And now he’s your enemy,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Monkey swung up to his feet, vision flooded with red. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he growled. Eyes locked on Davari’s glowing the same shade of red as his soulmark, he pulled back his branded arm, fist balled. “ _He’s_ the one you should feel sorry for.”

And he threw himself at his former soulmate, his new enemy—

*

—And came around, flat on his back in the breaking ground.

His vision swam, eyes struggling to focus, and for a long, long time the only thing he could see, the only thing he could make any sense of was _Tripitaka_.

His dark monk’s eyes, trembling and wet, the heartbreak on his face, so much empathy, so much sorrow, like Monkey’s pain was somehow his pain too.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and Monkey heard an echo of the words inside his head, felt the ghost of a monk’s hand on his wrist, the weak one, the unmarked one, felt a burst of heat—

He sat up.

For a split second, head throbbing and vision still swimming, he wondered if it was all just some terrible nightmare. The effects of the breaking ground on his brain, something like that. He’d rip off his bracers and find his soulmark exactly as he left it, faded and grey and harmless. Davari was human, he was his soulmate, he’d been dead for centuries; the demon who had done this to him would pay with his life for making him believe otherwise. Even for a moment, even for just—

He pulled off the bracer, revealed his soulmark for all to see.

 _Red_.

True, then.

All of it.

Everything.

He sobbed. Loud and long and lost, and he didn’t care who saw.

Tripitaka covered the name with his palm. His touch was gentle, soft, but it didn’t soothe the pain. “Don’t look.”

Monkey mustered a laugh, rough and ragged and shot through with tears.

“Will it make it go away?” he asked, voice hoarse. “Not looking at it?”

“No.”

The honesty was refreshing, if not really comforting right now. Monkey sighed, but let the monk’s hand stay where it was. It was the only thing that soothed the pain, the sizzling heat where the mark was seared into his skin, and the ache in his chest, love turned to hate, grief to anger, everything he’d ever known into something new and violent and awful.

He looked down at his other hand. The left one, the weak one, the one that had been unmarked for all his life.

The skin on his wrist was tingling. Overstimulated, the way it used to get all those centuries ago, when he and—

 _No_.

He couldn’t say what compelled him to peel away the bracer there too, to look down and take in the skin that had been untouched by the hand of fate for as long as he could remember. Didn’t know what it was that spoke to him, but something did; he could feel it whispering into the back of his mind like something ethereal, compelling him to look, to search, to find a new kind of truth.

The bracer clattered noisily to the ground. The skin underneath—

A gasp lodged in his throat. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

There it was. Golden and glittering in a delicate, feminine hand:

 _Tripitaka_.

He lifted his head, slack-jawed and stunned, found the monk staring down at him with the same expression. Disbelief, awe, and a faint but beautiful blush.

“Is that...?” His voice was high, a perfect match for the delicate handwriting newly etched onto Monkey’s skin. “Is that _possible_?”

It wasn’t the question Monkey was expecting, to be honest.

A difficult thing, sometimes, being soul-bonded to humans; with no chance of a matching mark to lead them in the right direction, they had only their messy hearts to follow. But a glance at Tripitaka’s face made it obvious that wasn’t what he was talking about. Typical monk; even with his own name magically appearing on a god’s forearm in glittering gold, still his first question was _logistics_.

“That’s your name,” Monkey informed him, rather pointedly.

“Um. Yes.” He didn’t really sound convinced, though. Shell-shocked, maybe? He said it like a word in a foreign tongue, like he couldn’t connect the name to himself. And he was still fixated on the part that didn’t matter. “The Scholar never told me that could happen. Soulmarks just... appearing out of nowhere like that.”

The Master hadn’t mentioned it either. But then, to be fair, Monkey had never thought to ask.

“Because you’re not a god,” Sandy said to Tripitaka. She looked almost haunted, and her strange pale eyes were unfocused. “He told me. A long time ago. He said...” Her voice cracked, and for a few seconds she seemed almost lost. Then she caught herself, as though remembering who and where she was, and said again, very quietly, “He told me.”

Monkey raised a brow. So far as he was concerned, this was all new territory: the magically-appearing-soulmark thing and the part where Sandy actually knew something. He glanced up at Pigsy, found him understandably distracted by the demons gathering outside the grounds.

“What about you?” Monkey pressed him. “This stuff make any sense to you?”

Pigsy grunted, but didn’t confirm or deny. It wasn’t like him to be coy, but—

“You do know there are demons right outside the door, yeah?” His face was incredulous. “Is this really the appropriate time to sit around having profound feelings?”

Monkey smirked. He couldn’t help himself. “Aww. Jealous?”

“Yeah, you got me. Because having a shiny new soulmark is going to do you a lot of good if they get in here and start ripping the skin from your bones.”

Well, okay. So maybe he had a point there.

Monkey couldn’t say he minded, in truth. After what he’d just witnessed in his own mind, the burning pain with its new red glow, a soulmate turned into an enemy in the blink of an eye, he had plenty of demon-shaped rage to vent. The idiots snarling and growling outside would make the perfect pincushions for him to stick his ire, and he was not at all sorry that he would have to slay them all.

He swung to his feet, drawing and extending his staff. _Showtime_.

Tripitaka, clambering up beside him, suddenly looked very small.

Mortal, in truth this time, fragile and tiny and vulnerable. A new soulmate, a _true_ soulmate, hopeful and human and _honest_ , without any skeletons in his closet. No lies this time, and no dark secrets. Nothing hiding underneath those monk’s robes, nothing shrouded behind those big dark eyes.

No demon, no deception, no dishonesty.

Just the future stretched out in front of him, and a reason, at last, to fight for it.

For the first time in five hundred years, Monkey smiled.

**


	2. Chapter 2

**

Pigsy’s soulmark, rather like the rest of him, was not subtle.

It was a beautiful thing to behold. Looping across his left wrist in fine, frilly handwriting, the lettering and the name together made a stark contrast to his bulk and brawn.

 _Princess_ , pretty and perfect and precise, each letter produced with such care that even just looking at it was enough to fill his mind with a thousand visions, each more powdered and perfumed than the one before.

The name wasn’t the problem, though. Nor was the delicacy or the prettiness. He wasn’t the first awkward-looking, husky young god to have a fancy feminine soulmark, and he’d surely not be the last.

No, the problem was the colour. Or, more accurately, the _colours_.

Half-gold and half-red, the shades shifted and shimmered like sand under the sun, clashing against each other in one moment then glinting in perfect harmony in the next.

One soulmark, two colours. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that meant.

He was still just a boy, at least by god standards, when he left home. Tired of the pitying looks, the drooping mouths and sad eyes whenever someone caught sight of his solitary shifting soulmark. Older and wiser than him, and delighted for any excuse to prove it, they wasted no time in telling him what a terrible tragedy it was, how heartbreaking for such a _kind_ young man to learn that his soulmate and his nemesis would be one and the same.

 _Kind_ was about the last thing he felt after hearing that for the thousandth time, and so he left. For their safety, and his sanity.

He wandered aimlessly for a while, not knowing where to go or what to do with his life. Not knowing much of anything at all, in truth, only that he didn’t want anything to do with the name printed so pristinely on his skin.

Two things he learned quickly.

The first, that he wasn’t much of a god. In a world swarming with fate-blessed immortals, flawless specimens of power and perfection, he was barely even worth a first glance, much less a second. He was a half-success, half-failure, gifted with a little piece of everything but master of nothing in particular; the lightning heeded his call half the time and ignored him the rest, and while he was physically stronger than the average waifish elemental, still he crumbled like dust next to the mountain-sized goliaths he’d known growing up.

The second thing he learned was that he couldn’t really pass for a human either. Much too big, much too powerful, and even when he tried to keep his talents in check they always seemed to find new ways to spill over. After the fourth time he accidentally set fire to someone’s home, he gave up on trying to blend in.

Instead, with little other choice, he became something in between. A sort of larger-than-life halfway creature, not god enough to stand beside his own kind, but not nearly human enough to be counted among the mortals who walked beside him. Still, being a god among men had to be better than being a man among gods, and so he stayed.

He was big and strong, and eager to work, and that was enough for most to overlook his awkwardness and ineptitude. He could do things they could not, could work harder and longer and more tirelessly than even the very best of them, and at least for as long as he was making himself useful they were happy to let him pretend to be whatever he liked.

He found work on a small farm, and for a time he was happy.

Up to his elbows in mud and hay and the smell of animals, muscles sore from the day’s labour. The humans who paid him never really saw him as one of their own, but he didn’t bother himself about that. It was good work, honest work; it was _human_ work, and as far away from anyone or anything that could call themselves a princess as any work could get.

That was the important part, so far as he was concerned, the only thing that really mattered. He didn’t care if his employers saw him as a person or a god, a workhorse or a weirdo, didn’t care that they sneered when he said his name, when they sent him to muck out the pens and said he’d be right at home. The dirtier the better, he thought, and in any case weren’t pigs supposed to be noble beasts?

Nobler than a down-and-out would-be god, at least. Definitely nobler than a god hiding among humans from his soulmate and enemy, from a name that could mean anything.

He thought it’d be easy, cheating fate. Figured he was safe, hiding out in the middle of nowhere, bowing to humans and animals and shovelling dirt and mud. No chance of trouble there, no-one stupid enough to take a liking to some in-between nobody that neither man nor god would want anything to do with. Who would waste their life making a mark on a soul as worthless as his?

It filled him with a strange sense of easiness when he heard them murmur — humans and gods alike — that he’d never amount to anything. As if aspirations to greatness were all that could make a man happy. He was cheerful enough the way he was, content in the mud, happy with his hands dirty; they’d picked his name well, and he wore it comfortably. Wore it with pride, even, and all the more for how different it was from the one inked on his skin.

Once he was older and a little more worldly, he took to frequenting the local taverns. And, for a very short while, the brothels.

That didn’t last long. A handful of overpriced tumbles, a few weeks’ worth of wages literally screwed away... it was all fine and good for about five minutes. Then he overheard one of the girls talking about a client who called herself ‘the duchess’, and suddenly the safe confines of a pleasure house didn’t seem so safe any more. Just a couple of steps from a duchess to a princess, wasn’t it? And he’d be damned if he met his soulmate _or_ his nemesis in a place like that.

...though he suspected it might explain a few things if he had.

“Why do you care?” one of the farmhands asked him one day. A young man — and younger still, in the eyes of a god — ignorant to the ways of the world and tragically human to boot; he’d taken an interest in Pigsy from the first, fascinated by the real-life god hauling hay by his side, and romantically awed by the name printed on his wrist. “I mean, so what if you end up fighting to the death? At least you’ll get a good time out of it first.”

Pigsy sighed. He didn’t like talking about it at the best of times, much less to someone he knew would never be able to understand.

“It’s not like that, lad,” he said, with as much patience as he could muster (not much, even on a good day). “Nothing to say your soulmate has to be... _that_.” The boy wrinkled his nose, playing dumb, and Pigsy rolled his eyes. “It’s not about romance or someone to warm your bed at night. Just means the person who turns your world around. Transforms your life, and your soul. Turns you into something... more.”

“More than this?” A snort, derisive but not cruel. Not intentionally, at least. “You’re a god, and you’re stuck down here with the likes of us. Feeding the pigs, mucking out the stables, doing what _humans_ tell you to do. Wouldn’t you want some perfect princess to come along and turn you into something more than that?”

 _Not really,_ Pigsy thought, but because it wasn’t something he could explain, he merely grunted.

The boy threw up his hands, undeterred, and pressed on. “You’re not one of us. Not really. You shouldn’t be down here pretending to be human. You should be up there in the heavens with the rest of your kind.”

Again, not intentionally cruel. But the sting was sharp just the same. Pigsy sighed again, heavier this time.

“Wouldn’t have amounted to anything up there,” he said. “Turns out, I’m not much of a god.”

“Yeah?” The lad grinned, the wide-eyed, apple-cheeked innocence of someone who could never understand but sill fancied themselves an expert. “Well, maybe your princess will make you a better one, hm? Swoop in and rescue you from this boring old human existence?”

Pigsy didn’t have the heart to tell him that he preferred it this way. That being a god among humans was a kinder sort of life than being a nobody among his fellow gods. That he couldn’t imagine a worse sorrow than finally meeting his soulmate, the one person in all the world fated to see him as something more than the worthless creature he was, only to look at them a day or a week or a century later and find only the eyes of a hated enemy.

He tugged his shirtsleeve down over his soulmark let the sweat soak through the letters. Let himself imagine that the hard, honest labour, could wash the unwanted future from his skin.

“It’s not so bad,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “Living with you lot. You keep me fed and watered, and you never expect too much. Could do a lot worse than this boring old human existence.”

And he flashed his most charming grin, and pretended he believed it.

*

It was good, for a couple of centuries.

The farm passed down from human to human, generations of old and young watching over the place and helping it to thrive, with Pigsy as its only constant. They were generally happy to keep him on, the god with the strong shoulders and broad back, big hands and a big voice, always eager to do the heavy lifting; one or two would need a little convincing now or then, but it didn’t generally take much to convince them of his value. After all, even a mostly-worthless barely-god was more durable than a half-dozen humans.

He loved the work. Really, he did. The physicality of it, the honest sweat drenching his brow and sticking to his shirt, the exertion and exercise, the closeness to the earth. He loved the necessary distance from his employers, being almost a part of something but never completely. No proper attachment to the men and women who owned the place, no risk of commitment or complications, only a shared love of the land and its beasts.

He really could do a lot worse, he thought. A whole lot worse.

Then the demons came, and he discovered exactly how much.

They came in swarms. Dozens of them, then hundreds, then what seemed like thousands. Like a bursting floodgate, unstoppable and cataclysmic, they shook the earth and everyone living on it.

He’d heard about it long before he saw it with his own eyes. Whispers and murmurs and rumours from the nearby villages, people locking their doors a little more carefully at night, keeping their windows shut tight. The brothels might have been off-limits but the taverns weren’t, and he’d drunk away more wages over the years than he’d ever admit in polite company. It was a hotbed of gossip, and he’d learned countless years ago how to prise open even the tightest lips with just the right amount of ale or wine.

At first, he thought that was all it was. Idle gossip and fear-mongering, some idiot prankster running around trying to scare good but gullible people. Would hardly be the first time, and he was about one drink shy of grabbing his rake and putting a stop to the whole affair when he had the misfortune of glancing out the window and seeing the terrible truth for himself.

His breath stopped; his heart stalled. For the first time in his life, he was terrified.

He knew a demon when he saw one, of course; whatever the distance between himself and his people, some things could not be erased.

But he had never seen them _here_.

Not in all the countless years he’d spent whiling away his years and wasting his life in quiet service to humanity, had he ever seen a demon cross this way. Not once, not even in passing. He’d made his home on purpose a backwater speck of a village, some never-heard-of middle-of-nowhere corner of nothing, of no interest to anyone, least of all a slavering horde. Besides, the demon population was hardly thriving. Where would they have found such numbers, such power, such—

He didn’t have time to wonder.

They were on the town in seconds, tearing through everything in their twisted path, slaughtering men and women and children without hesitation or thought.

Out on the streets he could hear them screaming and shouting, shrieking to the heavens for saviours that would not come. Some on their knees, weeping that the gods had fallen, others raising their fists to the sky, wailing that they’d been abandoned. Still more — the only ones with any brains, so far as Pigsy was concerned — insisting that it didn’t matter either way; dead or simply gone, what difference did it make when the end of the world had already found them?

Pigsy, a god among humans, a god who had lived as one of them for so long that his own identity was little more than a faded memory, felt the faintest flicker of shame.

It lasted only a moment, if even that long. The tiniest moment, a flame ignited and then immediately extinguished.

Then, like any sensible human, he turned on his heels and ran for his life.

*

He was one of the lucky ones.

Mostly lucky, anyway.

He was still alive. Still breathing. Still more or less in one piece, still sort of kicking. Still whole and hale and healthy enough to put up a half-decent fight if he needed to.

Still _free_.

It was a whole lot more than he could say for many of the others. Gods and humans, united in the grave, and neither one would spare a thought for him now.

For a long time he couldn’t really call it living, the way he made it through his days and nights. Could barely even call it surviving, except on the really good days. It was just existing, or trying to, breathing because he couldn’t stop, living hand to mouth to keep himself strong enough to fight, ducking and weaving and trying to make his big body as small as it could get. Not very, not much, but hey, he’d always been good at working with what he had.

All of a sudden, his miserable little two-tone soulmark didn’t seem so important. Nothing did, really, and that least of all. And so, for a couple of long and hellish centuries, the only thought he gave to the stupid thing was how to most effectively keep it hidden, out of sight and out of mind, just like the rest of him.

Then, just when he’d reached the point where nothing mattered at all, _she_ showed up.

Pigsy had always been a superstitious sort of god; there was a reason he’d spent so much of his life trying to hide from the name on his wrist. He was smart enough to know that there were too many unexplainable things out in the world, too many things that could only be called fate or destiny, and while he really didn’t like it, he had just enough wisdom and experience to know there probably wasn’t very much he could do about it. Once the universe decided to have its way with him, all he could do — all anyone could do — was hold on tight and hope it didn’t leave a bruise.

It was his own damn fault, really. Couldn’t suppress his nature, not even when his survival depended on it. Couldn’t stop being a god, not even in a world where it meant getting killed.

He was crouched in an alley when it happened, hiding from a gang of demons who’d taken it upon themselves to try and rough him up. No reason, so far as he could tell, only that one of them thought he’d looked at him funny. Wouldn’t have been much of a fight, if he’d been inclined to give them one, but a few centuries in this bastard of a new world had taught him that it was better to pretend he was weak than risk something worse.

Besides, he’d never had much claim to courage, never pretended he was the sort to fight the good fight. Nope. Best to just stay out of sight, keep his head down, and live to fight when the odds were a little bit better.

If they ever turned that way again.

A shout rang out from the street, cutting into his head like it was right next to him. Pain and fear, but no horror. A strange sort of sound in this day and age; usually the horror was the first thing out of their mouths. A cornered god chased to exhaustion, staring into the face of his doom, or a weakened human plucked out of the herd to be made an example of. Had to keep them all in line somehow; what better way than through public displays of force?

This wasn’t one of those, though. Pigsy could tell that in an instant, and maybe that’s why it got his attention.

The fear was wild and directionless; it came from the pain, and that was the wrong way round for an assault. He remembered the sound from the world before, from his time on the farm, when one of the more idiotic farmhands got himself trampled half to death by a spooked stallion. A freak accident, only stupidity and laziness to blame, but his screams were the stuff of nightmares. Softer, in a way, than the ones he heard nowadays, but haunting just the same.

It sounded just like that, the scream he heard now. Not like an attack, not the fear of violence or death, not another brutal mark of the world they lived in. Just a terrible accident.

He stuck his head out, peered cautiously into the street. It was quiet for this time of day, and that made it easier to find the source of the trouble.

Another human idiot stuck under another spooked horse, the old world rearing its head in the damndest ways. A coachman fallen from his carriage, it looked like, with his legs all tangled up in the reins; Pigsy was no expert in human stupidity, for all his years of experience, but he had a sneaking suspicion the fool had fallen asleep and found a rude awakening when he dropped out of his seat and into trouble.

It was instinct that made him move. Instinct, and perhaps the memory of that other bloody fool all those centuries ago, in a world where he didn’t need to hide who and what he was, where a god could be a god, where a man of any kind could display feats of strength in public without fear of death or something a whole lot worse.

He threw himself between horse and driver, gripping the reins as tightly as he could — survival had wilted some of his strength, but there was enough left for this — and pulled with all the godly power he had in him. Pulled until the whole thing split apart, reins and bridle and everything. The horse, freed, galloped off like a bolt of lightning, directionless in its panic, and the idiot human, still screaming, fell to the ground face-first.

It was over in the blink of an eye. But apparently that was time enough for the hand of fate to reach out, grab him by the wrist, and remind him of what he had spent half his life running from.

She stepped down from the carriage like a masterpiece, a vision of beauty straight out of a portrait. For a moment, struck dumb and forgetful, Pigsy was convinced he was staring at a god.

Then she opened her mouth, and he remembered where he was.

“Oi, you!” Her voice was a razor to his nerves, a harsh reminder of his nature and a wake-up call to hers. No god could affect him so, and the illusion died as quickly as it had formed. “What the bloody hell d’you think you’re doing?”

He stammered, stumbled, wondering with feverish horror if he could get away with pretending he was just a very strong but unremarkable human. “Uh... right place, right time?”

“Not you, handsome.” And she swept past him like he was just a passing distraction. Moving — no, _stalking_ — like a lioness, she picked up her driver by the scruff of his neck, glared down into his pain-streaked, frightened face and said, “What d’you think you’re playing at, eh? You think I pay you for incompetence?”

The man blanched even whiter than he already was. Watching the two of them, the hairs stood up on the back of Pigsy’s neck. He’d never really gotten this close to a demon before, at least not without turning around and running for his life; it was terrifying to behold, it truly was, but some strange part of him couldn’t help feeling a little intrigued.

“He’s injured,” he heard himself blurt out. “Don’t you think—”

“Hush, you. It’s not your turn yet.” She gripped the coachman’s neck a little harder, a hungry predator toying with its prey. He moaned. “Now, then, where were we? Oh, yes. Excuses. Let’s have ’em.”

No surprise the poor human was in no fit state to offer any. He swallowed his pain as best he could, the brave little thing, then clenched his teeth and gritted out, “I’m sorry, Princess.”

The world lurched under Pigsy’s feet. His breath caught in his throat. His heart, pounding like a drum just a moment ago, stopped completely.

A _demon_.

Well, didn’t that make all the sense in the bloody world?

He took a step back. His legs felt heavy.

“—And where do you think _you’re_ going?”

“Uh.” He cleared his throat, yanking his sleeves down all the way over his hands. Better safe than sorry. “Job done, eh? I mean, your man’s in one piece and so’s your carriage, so, uh...”

“ _Stay_.”

It wasn’t her voice that compelled him, or the fire lighting up like a threat behind her eyes. He didn’t really know what it was, in truth, and the more he tried to think about it, the less he wanted to.

“Uh.” He swallowed, feeling dizzy and nauseous. “I don’t... I’m not really... that is...”

“Uh huh. Do I look like I care?” She looked him up and down, the way the farmers used to examine the animals, like she was trying to figure out which part of him to turn into a meal. “I’m down one horse, thanks to you. And one man, too, though that’s his own bloody fault.” She let the poor coachman go, and he fell back to the ground with another cry of pain. “No place for ineptitude here, sunshine. Off you go, and be thankful your head’s still on your shoulders.”

He moaned a shaky “thank you”, and Pigsy’s stomach turned.

“You’re just going to leave him there? The man’s half-dead.”

“And a lucky boy he is, that it’s only half.” She didn’t even spare the poor fellow a glance; so far as she was concerned, he no longer existed. “Now, _you_ , on the other hand...” Her eyes darted over his body again, lingering just a moment too long on his wrists; he looked down too, checking in spite of himself that his soulmark was covered, and instantly cursed himself for giving it away even if it was. “ _You_ interest me.”

He took another step back. “Don’t see why,” he managed. “Nothing interesting here. Just a concerned citizen.”

“Of course you are, my sweet. Of course you are.” She crowded into the space he was trying to put between them, leaving him with no visible escape route. “Now, then. Come along and don’t dawdle. I’m not in the habit of repeating myself, and I don’t negotiate on wages. You’ll be thankful enough to have a roof over your head, by the look of you. To say nothing of...” She glanced back down, taking in his wrists again with a sly smile. “ _Well_. No doubt it’ll serve you well, being under my protection for a spell, don’t you think?”

He knew what she was saying. And she knew that he knew.

“A generous offer. ” He said it carefully, knowing just how easily it could turn into a not-so-generous threat, acutely aware of how little choice he really had. “Suppose I have been out in the sun too long. A spot of shade couldn’t hurt.”

“Oh, it’ll be just what you need,” she breezed, not bothering to conceal her leer. “You’ll feel right at home in no time.”

And as he fell into step beside her, right there in broad daylight, Pigsy thought, _that’s exactly what I’m afraid of_.

*

It was all too easy, feeling right at home in a demon’s palace.

She made sure of that.

In the old days, when the gods ruled and the demons were nothing more than toothless scavengers, Pigsy had thrived best with mud and dirt on his hands, with his back bowed and sweat on his brow; in a world where gods didn’t have to lift a finger all their lives, he was the rare exception, a god who lived for labour, who was at his happiest when working hard.

Now, in a world where the gods were all but extinct, hunted and hiding and struggling to survive, he suddenly found himself in the lap of unrepentant luxury.

Locke — _Princess_ Locke, the name printed in perfectly letters over his wrist, the name he’d been hiding from his whole life — was an expert in getting what she wanted, and she made sure that he learned from her. She groomed him slowly, carefully, with all the expertise of someone who knew exactly what they were doing. She gave him everything — a hearth, a home, freedom to come and go as he pleased, freedom to _be_ — and at first she didn’t ask for anything serious in return. A little help with the heavy lifting, a few errands here and there, a permanent position as her bodyguard. Never anything unpleasant or dangerous. Never anything _bad_.

So he told himself, anyway.

And so what if some days his job got a little dirtier? So what if once or twice the bodyguard had to step up and put someone in line? Was it really so terrible, selling out a god or two, if it meant keeping the peace? Wasn’t it all for the greater good in the end? Wasn’t that what really mattered?

She praised him. Told him how talented he was, wondered aloud how she ever got by without him. It was the first time in his long, long life that anyone had said anything like that, the first time someone had looked at him like he was actually worth something. Not the super-strong god-freak who’d chosen to live among humans, not the unworthy weakling who couldn’t stand up to his peers. Just _him_ , Pigsy, in his own body and in his own soul, finally good enough, just as he was.

Did it matter that she was a demon? Did it matter that some of the things he did might harm one of his fellow gods? Did anything matter at all in this nightmarish mess the world had become?

He spent a lot of time alone, justifying it in his head and on his skin. He kept his soulmark covered in public, like any sensible god would in such dangerous times, but in private he would stare at it for hours on end, watching as the colours shifted and changed, dependent, it seemed, on his mood at the time. 

Some days — the days when he convinced himself there was no harm in playing servant to a demon — the name on his skin gleamed and grew beautiful; it was never completely golden, no matter how desperately he wished it would be, but on the good days it got close enough that he could pretend he didn’t see the red tint. It was always there, even in his best moments, hiding under the glister, but when everything else aligned, he could imagine it wasn’t.

On the bad days, though, the days when he would look around and see where he was and remember the cost, the name on his skin would burn and blaze like a sunset, like the moment when day turned to dark, a streak of blood pouring its way across the gold like a vein cut open, messy but without the pain.

He could feel the struggle inside himself. Two versions of her: the soulmate he wanted, the woman he sort of cared for, who seemed to genuinely care for him as well, in spite of everything, the woman who shared his bed and his life… and then the enemy, the demon hiding behind the warmth. He couldn’t ignore what she was, any more than he could truly ignore what he was. Their very natures stood opposed, waging war against each other even when their bodies were at peace, and he watched it play out like a drama through the soulmark on his skin, the gold and the red, the gilded cage that had become his home and the blood-soaked bones that had built it.

It couldn’t last. It _wouldn’t_ last. He knew that. Felt it inside himself every time they went to bed, the parts of them that fit together clashing against the parts that were made to be enemies. Demons and gods, gods and demons; they weren’t meant to play with each other, and they certainly weren’t meant to sleep with each other. It went against everything he’d ever known, everything he was, even here It was unnatural, it was _wrong_... and wasn’t it just his damn dumb luck that it was the only place in the world he’d ever felt like he truly belonged.

Couldn’t ignore the colours, though. Couldn’t cover his eyes and pretend he didn’t see those moments when the red shone over the gold, couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what it meant. _One day she will be your enemy; one day you will be hers_.

They never fought. That was the funny part. Never argued, never disagreed. Pigsy was a natural follower, at his happiest when cooled by the shadow of someone wiser; in the old world that meant labouring under the command of humans, in this new one it meant sitting pretty and doing what a demon ordered him to.

He told himself that was what mattered. Convinced himself that he was content, that he was happy. Convinced himself thoroughly and completely. And for a couple of almost-peaceful centuries, it was lovely.

Then that bloody monk came to town, and the whole thing fell apart.

*

He wasn’t supposed to be the difficult one.

He wasn’t even supposed to be there at all.

Pigsy had never spent much time in the company of gods, even when the world was theirs, but there were lines drawn even then. He’d been the exception, a god who made a home among humans, but for most of his kind it was unthinkable. Humans were human, gods were gods; perhaps a part of it came from the soulmark thing — if they didn’t fraternise with humans, perhaps they could avoid having their heart broken by a too-mortal soulmate — but he suspected the major bulk was just good old-fashioned prejudice.

From his experience, that hadn’t really changed much in the new world, just flipped on its head. These days, it was the humans who didn’t want to be seen in the company of gods. No prejudices there, of course, just a standard-issue fear of death.

Monks were a little less focused on self-preservation than your average human, true enough, but Pigsy had never seen one actively hanging out with gods in broad daylight.

Then again, how many gods had he seen in daylight at all?

Two of them this time, plus the monk. Death-wishes all around.

The first, the female, he knew a little. Fierce and more than a little feral, she’d been a thorn in Locke’s side for some time, too quick to ever be caught; Pigsy had crossed swords a with her a number of times, and he always came out the worst for it. If not for the fact that she wasn’t quite right in the head, she might have been a serious threat.

It was a pretty big ‘might’, though, that, and one that settled uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach. The differences between them were vast, thank the heavens, but he knew it was only through sheer dumb luck and the gold-red lettering on his wrist. He didn’t like to think about it too much, and so he tried not to look her in the eye.

As for the other god...

The _real_ prize.

The Monkey King.

Locke didn’t care about much else, he could tell, and who could blame her for that? Two gods were always a more profitable catch than one, but in this case the one spoke for himself. Alive and well after five bloody centuries. A living, breathing paragon of everything the world once was, and everything that had gone wrong since. What demon wouldn’t be excited to have him in their clutches?

Pigsy didn’t know as much as he probably should about the change that had turned the world upside-down, but even he knew enough to understand that Monkey had played a major part.

He was more than just another captive god, and Locke knew it as well as he did. To the upstart resistance scrabbling about among the humans, Monkey was a symbol of hope, of faith, of a future more like the past than the present. His existence alone was more dangerous than a thousand other gods all put together.

The other god was nice, but not necessary.

The monk—

Collateral damage, at best. At worst...

Maybe he should’ve held his tongue. Kept quiet, stood in the back, not drawn attention to it. Locke, giddy with her unexpected paycheck and having eyes only for the Monkey King, might have failed to notice the little human slumped at the back of the cart, might have just left him there to rot, unseen and forgotten. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d overlooked something obvious. Wouldn’t be the first time she’d shown a twisted kind of mercy, either, though that was much rarer. If he’d only kept his mouth shut, maybe...

But he didn’t, did he? All those centuries under his belt, the old world and the new, a hundred thousand stupid decisions, and he still hadn’t figured out how to keep quiet.

“Kill him,” she said, when he asked.

As if he couldn’t have expected that. As if he hadn’t _known_.

Idiot.

Something shifted as she said it, though, as he looked down and took in the tiny, unconscious, helpless little human. Something in the way Locke was leering, something in the way the monk didn’t move. _Something_ , and it made him feel like the ground had just shifted underneath his feet, like a part of him had been transformed.

He didn’t figure out what until it was too late.

It wasn’t the first time he’d smuggled a human to safety instead of quietly snuffing them out. Wouldn’t have been the first time if it had been one of the gods, either. He did what little he could from a position that granted him more freedom than most, and tried to pretend it was enough. He didn’t need a holy man staring up at him with judgement in his eyes to know that it wasn’t.

This one didn’t judge, though. He just frowned and blinked, like he didn’t understand what ‘run for your life’ meant.

“Am I speaking in tongues?” Pigsy snapped, nudging the lad none too gently with his rake. “Go on. Get out of here.”

The monk looked up at him, fervour igniting his dark eyes. “I’m _Tripitaka_.”

He said it with such passion and conviction that Pigsy almost dropped his bracers right then and there to check he hadn’t been misreading his soulmark all this time. He said the name like it had meaning, like it had _power_ , like he expected Pigsy to drop to his knees in supplication.

Like anyone would do that.

“Good for you,” he said flatly, then pointed off into the clearing. “Now off you go.”

But he didn’t. He just frowned some more and mumbled, “My friends...”

Pigsy sighed, a lifetime of bad choices like a weighted noose around his neck.

“Trust me,” he said, with genuine regret, “you don’t want to stick around to see what’s in store for them.”

The monk — Tripitaka — reeled as though he’d been struck a blow.

“I have to save them,” he whispered faintly. “You have to help me.”

“No. _You_ have to get out of here, and _I_ have to get back to my...” He stopped, clapping a hand over his wrist, wishing he could keep the feelings inside by keeping the blasted thing hidden. “I have to get back home. Understand?”

Not the brightest monk in the monastery, he still hesitated. The frown had vanished by now, though, replaced by something that looked unsettlingly like clarity.

“Oh,” he breathed, almost to himself. “You think she’s your—”

“You finish that sentence,” Pigsy snapped, raising his rake in a deadly warning, “and I’ll finish the job Locke sent me here to do.”

Tripitaka studied him for a long moment, as though debating whether or not to try and call his bluff. Pigsy didn’t bother saying anything further; experience had taught him he didn’t need to. He knew what he looked like, intimidating and frightening to far bigger men than a monk barely out of puberty. He took a menacing step forward, just to drive the point home, and watched with the usual mix of relief and rejection as fear turned those dark eyes wide.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I’m going.”

And he turned on his heel and ran.

Pigsy watched him go, watched until he was only a shadow, a sun-touched speck disappearing over the horizon.

 _Well,_ he thought, inexplicably exhausted, _that’s the end of that_.

*

It was not, in fact, the end of anything.

Point of fact, it was just the beginning.

Pigsy wished he could say he was surprised when Tripitaka showed up again, but he wasn’t. He’d seen that look in the boy’s eyes before, the hungry mix of fear and determination, the unshakeable faith of a monk who had pledged his life to doing the right thing, no matter how rocky the path. He’d known, even as he watched him run for the hills, that he could no more have abandoned his immortal friends to languish in Locke’s prison than Pigsy could have turned around and killed a human in cold blood.

Some things just weren’t in their nature. No matter how far they ran, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how terrifying the truth, some parts of the soul could not be changed.

And so, despite his better instincts — despite his _survival_ instincts — he abandoned his lunch and saved the fool monk’s life.

Again.

And then things got weird.

He told him to leave, again, for his own bloody safety. He pointed out — rather reasonably, or so he thought — that the monk was a dead man walking, that if any of Locke’s men caught sight of him he’d be dust before he even knew what was happening. He reminded him, again, that it was a miracle and a mercy that he was still alive in the first place, that he wouldn’t be so fortunate the next time, if he kept pushing his luck like this.

He said and did everything he could think of to make the lad see sense, all to no avail.

“I have to do this,” Tripitaka said, over and over again, like that was all that mattered.

Maybe it was, for him. But Pigsy has his own skin to worry about.

“Look,” he sighed. “If you won’t leave to save yourself, how about you do it for me? Because if Locke finds out you’re still in one piece, my life won’t be worth living.”

Tripitaka studied him for a long, long moment. Silent, thoughtful. Even as he knew better than to expect sense from him at this point, Pigsy hoped he was taking his words to heart, seeing the danger he was putting others in by sticking around. He was a monk, right? A holy man. It was his job to care about the fates of others, wasn’t it?

Maybe, yeah. But certainly not in the way Pigsy would have liked.

Finally, speaking very carefully, Tripitaka said, “She’s not your soulmate.”

Pigsy’s chest grew tight. Anger, frustration, and... something else.

“Oh, so you’re an expert now?”

“No. But even I know that a god and a demon should never be soulmates.” His gaze flickered, like he wanted to take a look but didn’t quite dare, then he kept right on talking, as if he’d seen the shifting colours with his own eyes,. “And if you’re honest with yourself, I think you know it too.”

“What I know,” Pigsy said slowly, “is that you’re making my life _very_ difficult.”

Tripitaka shook his head. “I think you’ve known it for a long time now. That she’s not right for you, that you shouldn’t be with her. You’re just afraid to admit it.”

Pigsy glared. “I saved your life, you little ingrate. Twice. At great personal cost. Don’t you talk to me about being afraid.”

He didn’t really expect the little monk to listen to him; by this point, he couldn’t even hope for it. Besides, if there was one thing he’d learned about humans, it was their bloody-mindedness in making themselves heard. No matter the world, that never changed. Still, it was like a shock of cold water when he reached out, as quick as a lightning bolt, and yanked both bracers off Pigsy’s wrists.

In broad daylight.

Bloody idiot.

If he was surprised to see only one soulmark, he didn’t let it show. And if he was surprised to see its strange shifting colours...

No. He _wasn’t_ surprised. He’d _expected_ it.

“You see?” he said, pointing. The stupid thing was being even more rebellious than usual, exactly half-red and half-gold, a razor-sharp slash across the middle to separate the two. Tripitaka ran his thumb across the letters, not nearly as respectful as a human should be when putting his hand on a god’s private soulmark, and whispered, “You know what it means.”

“Yeah, I do.” And he didn’t need some fresh-faced little human explaining it to him, either. “It means she’s my soulmate and my enemy. One and the same. Lucky me, eh?”

Tripitaka looked up at him, sad and sort of pitying. Then, in a very low voice, he said, “I don’t think that’s what it means.”

“Right, right. I forgot, you’re the expert. Voice hasn’t even broken yet, and still somehow you know more about this stuff than a god who’s lived for centuries.” He softened a little, though, brushing Tripitaka’s hand aside and covering his troublesome soulmark with his own. “It’s right there. Not exactly subtle, the fate thing. It couldn’t have made the point any bloody clearer.”

“You’re right about that. But...”

He took a step backwards, as though giving him room to breathe and think, and this time when he looked down his eyes were on the other wrist, the bare one. Self-conscious, as he had been his whole life, Pigsy covered that one instead, exposing the red-gold slash of Locke’s name to the air again.

“You know, it’s not polite for a human to stare at a god’s soulmarks.” He coughed. “Or, ah, lack of them.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t really sound it, but at least he had the decency to avert his eyes. “But you’ve got it backwards. Your soulmark isn’t trying to tell you she’s _both_. It’s trying to tell you she could be _either_.”

Pigsy snorted. “That’s just...” He swallowed uneasily. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

But even as he said it, he felt something shift under his skin. Skittering, burning, the threat of something powerful in the empty space where his second soulmark should have been. Like a warning, maybe, or a dangerous promise.

“You have to choose,” Tripitaka went on, ignoring him. “Stay with her, and she becomes your soulmate. She’ll change the course of your life, turn you into something like her.”

That stung, but not for the reasons he probably thought. Pigsy sighed, shook his head.

“Take a look around, will you? I’m already there.”

“Not completely. Not if you choose to walk away.” His face was bright and open when he turned back around, his eyes seeming to burn under the sun; for just a moment they looked almost golden. Then he touched the soulmark again, and it was like they both caught fire. “You can deny her. Deny the hold she has on you. Make her your enemy, and make yourself a better man.”

Spoken like a true monk, that. Pigsy wanted to laugh. He wanted to bare himself, soul and body, to let Tripitaka see him as he was, a base and sordid creature soiled and stained by the life that had found him, the life he’d spent years convincing himself he owned, to point at everything he’d done, all those dirty deeds he’d told himself didn’t matter, the gods he’d caught and sold or worse, the humans he’d cast out of their homes, the lives he’d destroyed so that his own might be a bit more comfortable.

He wanted to show them both what he really was, his truest colours, but even as he raised a hand to try, he was stopped by the tingling under his skin. It swelled like a wave, like a spreading blaze, smothering everything else, and for a few impossible moments all he could do was stare down at his wrist, the right one, the one that should have held his second soulmark, the one that had been stubbornly blank his whole life—

The one that was blossoming now, a sudden burst of colour, red and gold and—

And a name.

The bloody _monk’s_ name, in handwriting almost as neat and clean as Locke’s. Half red, half gold. Identical in every way.

 _Tripitaka_.

Pigsy swallowed. Through all the centuries and soulmarks he had seen, he’d never known anything like this. A second mark appearing from out of nowhere, so late in life it was almost tragic.

A second _chance_ , too, if the monk’s words carried any truth.

Pigsy clapped a hand over the mark, covering it quickly, before Tripitaka could see.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think I do.”

He hadn’t noticed. Didn’t need to see his words made real, didn’t need to see it paint itself across Pigsy’s skin. Like so many of his kind — monks and humans alike — faith carried him farther than the keenest eyes ever could.

“You’re human,” Pigsy croaked, squeezing his arm.

“But you’re not.” His voice was clear, high but more powerful than anything Pigsy had ever heard. “Pigsy, you have a choice. Go back to Locke now, and you’ll never be anything more than a god serving a demon. You’ll be bound to that life, bound to _her_ , forever.” He breathed deep; the sun struck his face and for an odd moment he looked almost beautiful. “But come with me instead, help me to rescue my friends, and you can be _free_. You can create a different destiny. A better one. Don’t you want that for yourself?”

No, he didn’t.

At least, not until this moment.

He took a deep, careful breath.

He looked down at Locke’s name, the gold and the red waging their centuries-long war. One way or another, in a few minutes there would only be one colour left. The other—

He glanced back at the monk.

Young, wide-eyed, hopeful. A child of this world, the world that had broken and remade Pigsy into something even he didn’t recognise. The kind of person who hadn’t been alive long enough to grow cynical, the kind of person who could still look at a washed-up old has-been of a god and think maybe there was something left in him worth salvaging, a new path he could carve out for himself.

Pigsy didn’t really know what to do with that kind of hope.

He picked up his bracers, fastened them back in place. He didn’t want to see the moment he set his fate in skin and stone. Didn’t want to watch as his lover became his enemy, even if she wasn’t his soulmate.

Even if—

Even if.

He took another breath, steadying himself. Then, as gently as he could, he took the monk by the arm.

“This way,” he said.

And as the words fell from his lips, both his wrists began to burn.

**


	3. Chapter 3

**

They thought it was a birthmark.

“It happens,” the healer said with a careless shrug. “Saw one once that’d made a perfect map of the Eastern Continent.”

“Doesn’t look like a map,” the father mused, squinting at the blood-red mark. “Shame. Could’ve made use of a map.”

“Oh, well. Better luck next time, eh?” His labours complete, he turned to leave. “Strong and healthy, that’s all that matters.”

And she was. Healthy enough to scream the place down, strong enough to squeeze her father’s fingers like a vice as he plucked her out of her mother’s arms. Strong enough to survive a long and torturous labour, too, and to pull her mother through it as well. Twice, the healer had thought one or both of them would be lost, but it hadn’t happened. The risk of birthing too many children, he’d remarked, and a testament to their fortitude that they’d both survived.

The father, humbled as he always was by the moment of birth, didn’t say anything. He simply cradled his newest daughter to his chest and gazed down at her with love.

She stopped crying as he rocked her, settled into his arms like she had been made to fit there, and he felt the familiar warmth of fatherhood settle like a blanket across his heart. He bowed to kiss her forehead, then peered again at the crimson brand on her arm. A strange sort of a birthmark, to be sure, but the healer had assured him it was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Looks like a word,” he murmured. “A name, maybe?” He pressed a careful fingertip to the still-warm skin. “ _Sandy_.”

The mother, exhausted from yet another hard labour, could only muster a tired shrug. “Suppose it’s as good a name as any,” she said. “At least it’ll be easy to remember.”

And it was.

And it would be, for all three of them, for a long, long time.

*

They couldn’t have known, of course, what they’d done.

How could they, when they didn’t even know what they were looking at? The gods had been nothing more than myths and legends for generations, and the few who still spared a thought for them knew nothing of what had once singled them out from their demon and human brethren. The word ‘soulmark’ had been all but lost to the sands of time, and who could have imagined that an innocent-looking birthmark — even one that looked remarkably like a name — might hold a deeper, not-so-innocent meaning?

How could they possibly have known that their well-intended ignorance had fated their daughter to become her own worst enemy?

Liker her parents, like her brothers and sisters, Sandy grew up knowing nothing of gods or soulmarks. Where would she have learned it? She knew nothing of the power growing within her, nothing of what she was or what she would become. She only knew that she didn’t feel right in her body, and that the strange blemish on her wrist hurt like fire every time she caught a glimpse of her reflection, rippling and distorted, in water.

“It’s normal,” her mother told her, with fractured patience. “No-one feels comfortable inside themselves when they’re still young. You’ll grow up one day, and then you’ll figure out who you are.”

In time, of course, Sandy did grow up, just as her mother said she would. But she did not figure out who she was.

They told her she was a demon, and so she assumed she was. First her family, her father’s face like a thundercloud as he warned her never to return. He squeezed her marked wrist until it hurt, and then she saw her frightened, tearful face reflected in his eyes and it hurt even more. She watched him turn and leave, watched the cart vanish over the horizon, and then she looked down at her name, seared onto her skin in blood and pain, and wished she could burn it off forever.

He was the first to say it to her face, but he certainly wasn’t the last. She grew slowly but she grew, and her powers grew with her, and that word — _demon_ — followed her around like a rabid hound, slavering jaws hungry for her throat. She felt it, the wrongness that had always been inside of her, only now it had a name. Another name. Different than the one branded on her wrist, but still hers.

She was a demon, she was a monster, she was a wild and terrible thing. And when the power started to surge in her chest, when she found herself unable to control it, when people started drowning if they came too close, she knew that her family had been right to throw her away, knew that they had all been right to call her what she was. And she looked down at her wrist, at the name they had given her, and she hated it so much her vision filled with red.

She hated the word, the name scratched and soaked in blood, and she hated the skin and the way it burned, and she hated the twisted terrible creature who wore them both.

They saw her, of course, the way she saw herself. Everyone she passed, everyone she saw, everyone she met. Every face a reflection of her wrongness, every flinch a burst of pain, every look a threat or a cry of fear. And sometimes they ran from her, and sometimes they tried to hurt her, but they never looked at her face more than once. A glance was all it took, and their reflexes took them the rest of the way, to fight or flee, to seek safety for themselves or to try and spill her blood.

So she hid. From their words and their weapons, from their eyes most of all, the way they would look at her. From her own reflection, that gaunt, pallid nightmare of a creature that caused so much pain to anyone who looked upon it. From herself, and from the world and from everyone and everything that lived there. She became a ghost, living in the shadows, emerging only when the hunger became so unbearable she had no choice, and then disappeared again like mist.

Such as it was, that became her life. The dark, the cold, the emptiness. Alive in the shadows, suffocated in the light. Hunger gnawing in her belly, sour and sick with self-hatred, haunted by her own voice, her own face, by the name shining like a hellish beacon from her skin.

She tried to change it. The name on her wrist, the name her parents had given her, the name of a baby they thought would become a daughter. She scratched it out with stolen ink, scribbled the new one (the true one) underneath.

 _Demon_.

But it didn’t turn red and it didn’t stick to her skin and it didn’t do any of the strange painful things her old name did. It smudged and distorted, washed away by water and dirt, and then it was gone and she was just Sandy again.

A smaller name. A _human_ name.

A name meant for someone else.

*

Pain clung to her like a layer of dirt.

Pain in her wrist when she read her name or saw her reflection. Pain in her head when she tried to remember the many, many things that had fallen out. Pain in her belly when she was hungry and pain in her chest when she was sick. Pain in her limbs from too much cold. Pain in her bones when she got cornered and couldn’t back out, when she got too close to too many people, when they reminded her of what she was.

It happened more often than it should have. People, their fear and their hate, the pain they could inflict with a look, and with their bodies. She was stronger than she should have been for the way she lived, but hunger made her weak and desperation made her take risks. Places with food were places with people, and over the years she’d paid in blood for many of her meals. Theirs, usually, when they forced her to defend herself, but sometimes hers too.

Necessary sometimes. When they outnumbered her or when she felt sorry for them. It took so little of her to hurt them, but so many of them to hurt her. Many hands, many weapons, many voices, all raised up together against a common enemy, against _her_ , and only then did they drive her to the ground.

It took an army to hurt a demon, but it only took one demon to hurt an army. So sometimes she let it happen the other way — the way that hurt her instead of them — because she was tired of watching their pain stain her skin, of trying to figure out where their blood ended and her name began.

Maybe because she was tired of other things too, sometimes. Tired of having to steal, tired of having to hide. Tired of being powerful but lost, tired of being too much and too little at the same time. Tired of being scared, tired of being lonely, tired of being a monster in human skin. Tired of being—

Tired of _being_.

Until the day she opened her eyes and became something else.

Woke up in pain. Head throbbing, vision blurry. Concussion, maybe. Nothing serious, but enough. Must have been half a dozen, at least, to lay her so low. She didn’t remember it very clearly — didn’t remember much of anything lately; too many blows too the head or too much time alone, hard to tell — but she could feel its effects lingering on her body. Bruises that would quickly fade, a headache that would last only as long as she tried to think. Human fingerprints seldom lingered on a demon’s skin.

She wondered what she’d done to upset them this time, if she’d stolen too much or simply made herself too visible for too long. Wondered if they’d driven her into a corner or if she’d just stood there quietly and let it happen. Decided she was happier not knowing, happier with holes in her head. Sometimes she wished she could forget even more than she already had. How peaceful her mind would be if she could just forget everything.

She looked around.

Blinked.

Looked again.

Not the street. Not the sewers, not the gutters. No shadows, no holes to hide in, none of the dark, dank places she knew to be safe. The floor was cool but smooth, wooden boards hard against her back, and the walls were strong and the light was good. It had the aura of a sanctuary, but a haven for humans was no safe place for the likes of her, and every nerve in her body told her to be very, very—

“Don’t be frightened.”

The voice was human. It lit up her nerves, made her body go tense all over. Years of experience making her afraid, making her angry, making her itch with the need to protect herself. Her head did not thank her for the sharpness when she moved, but it would be grateful enough when she made it out of here alive.

She stood quickly. Wobbled a little, but stayed upright well enough. The pain never lasted very long, not like it would if she was one of them. Squinted, waited for her eyes to focus. Saw—

A monk.

He stood a short distance away, arms spread wide in front of him so she could see he was unarmed. A quick glance around confirmed it. No weapons in his hands, none hidden in his robes, none stashed nearby. If the people here had plans to murder her, they’d have a hard time of it.

But then, as far as she understood, monks did not kill. Not even when their lives were threatened. Not even _demons_.

Still, for all that her instincts told her this place she was safe, she did not feel that way at all. Didn’t feel safe anywhere, really, where she couldn’t see at least three exits in one glance. Certainly didn’t feel safe in the company of humans. Even peaceful, holy humans with big robes and empty hands.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said again, a little softer. “You’re perfectly safe.”

 _Lies_.

She tried to say the word, but it had been so many years since she last spoke that her voice couldn’t remember how. The sound caught in her throat, strangled and suffocated, and did not make it to her tongue.

So, in lieu of words, she growled, dropping into a crouch with her hands in front of her and her teeth bared. Inched backwards, snarling and hissing, until she found a cold, dark corner. Safety, as much of it as she could hope for.

The monk watched her, serene and gentle and unaffected by her wildness. “Do as you will,” he said. “Again, you’re perfectly safe.”

Sandy did not believe him. But he let her stay where she was, and so bit by bit she let her arms down, let him see her face.

He smiled. “You can call me the Scholar,” he said, in a voice so kind that she felt momentarily warm. “What’s your name?”

Sandy hissed again, because she still couldn’t speak. Her throat felt rusted and raw, unused for too long, and hard as she tried to get the hated, horrible word out, it would not come.

Frustrated, and without any other means of communicating, she pushed her sleeve up her arm and shoved her wrist at his face.

 _Name_.

He locked eyes with her. Still gentle, still kind. Waited, with all the patience of a holy man, for permission to approach her, and moved very carefully when she granted it. Maybe he was used to dealing with wretched things like her. Caged animals, wounded monsters. Wasn’t that what monks did? Tend to the horrible things no-one else would touch?

When he was finally close enough to read the name etched on her arm, his expression darkened into a frown.

“No,” he said, slow and careful, like he was speaking to a very small child. “Not your soulmark. Your _name_.”

Sandy snarled again, and the monk inched back a few paces. Startled but not scared; he must have realised what she was, yet he seemed utterly unafraid. Like he knew she didn’t want to hurt him, even though it went against everything a demon was supposed to be.

She ran her tongue across her cracked, parched lips. Coughed a few times to clear the cobwebs from her throat. Tried, one more time, to speak.

“That...” The word was a great effort, but at least she got it out. “That _is_ my name.”

He blinked, then frowned again, then took another few steps away from her. Giving her space to breathe or taking space for himself to think, she couldn’t tell and she didn’t care. He paced the length of the room, as though stuck in a troubled thought, then stopped and looked at her again. He’d put a lot of distance between them now, like he knew she needed to feel safe. Like he _understood_ —

No. Ridiculous.

Finally, still low and thoughtful, he spoke again. “That’s your name?”

Sandy grunted. “Said it.”

“Yes. Yes, you did.” Still, he pointed at her wrist again, like this was something important, something he had to be absolutely sure of. His eyes were dark now, and not cheerful. “That word, there? That’s your name?”

“Yes.” Still hoarse, but her voice was starting to remember what it was supposed to do; she even managed to sound as frustrated as she felt. “Yes. Sandy. My name.”

“I see.” He looked even less cheerful now. “In that case, I’m so, so sorry.”

Sandy didn’t understand. “Just a name. Stupid, pointless.”

“Oh...” His face crumpled with a strange sort of grief. “Oh, you poor thing. You really have no idea...” He trailed off when Sandy started growling again, then cleared his throat and clarified: “It’s not pointless at all. In fact, I’m afraid it’s terribly important.”

She still didn’t understand. But he was looking at the mark on her wrist with the same stricken misery she felt when she looked at it herself, like it was the source of some terrible grief. Like it was hurting him, at least in this moment, as badly as it had hurt her for all the years she’d worn it. And she didn’t know why, because she was a demon and she should not have felt such soft things, but it made her feel sad and ashamed.

“Sorry,” she forced out. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”

He waved a hand, dismissive, as though trying to pretend he wasn’t. Like she couldn’t see it in his eyes; she may not know much about humans and their feelings, but she knew pain when she saw it. If there was only one thing in all the world she knew as intimately as her hated name, it was pain.

Finally, in a fearful, uneasy whisper, he said, “Do you know what you are?”

Sandy almost smiled. Finally, something she did know.

“Yes.” She stood up again, looked him straight in the eye. “I’m a demon.”

And she didn’t understand why he looked even sadder.

*

He explained it to her. Very carefully, using very small words, so even she would be able to understand.

God. Not a demon. A god.

And the name on her arm...

“Soulmark.” The word tasted strange in her mouth, made her insides squirm when she tried to swallow it down. She didn’t like it at all. “It’s not my name. But it is my name.”

He sighed. “It _shouldn’t_ be your name.” Slow. Patient. More of both those things than she deserved. “It should be the name of your worst enemy. The person you’re fated to hate above all others.”

“Oh.” Her ribs squeezed her lungs. “That would explain a lot.”

He looked devastated, and she didn’t understand why. Couldn’t fathom the idea that his suffering might stem from hers; she could only rack her brains, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong. She wanted to apologise, but she didn’t know what for.

“Your parents should never have given you that name,” he said, after a moment. “They wrote out your fate without even realising it.” Frustrated, he slapped his leg. Sandy flinched backwards, startled by the unexpected violence from a monk; it took all of her strength not to lash out in self-defence, even though he hadn’t touched her. “This is what happens when the gods are forgotten and their ways left to die.” 

“Don’t understand,” Sandy mumbled, feeling embarrassed.

The Scholar sighed. His frustration intensified for a moment, then sputtered out.

“You should never have been burdened with this,” he explained softly. “To become your own worst enemy... it’s a cruel and unjust fate.”

That made little sense to Sandy, who had hated herself for so long that she couldn’t fathom being any other way.

“Better myself than somebody else,” she mumbled. “Yes?”

“That...” He mustered a chuckle, though it was dry and humourless. “Well, it’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. Your optimism will serve you well.”

Sandy didn’t feel particularly optimistic, but she knew better than to shrink away from a compliment given with kindness. It had been so many years since she’d heard one, she barely recognised the words for what they were.

After a long, thoughtful silence, the Scholar went on, as though he’d never stopped, “What about the other?”

“Other?” Her head hurt trying to wrap itself around the question. “Other enemy? Other name? Other what?”

“Your other _soulmark_ ,” he said, with a quiet sort of urgency. Then, when she merely blinked some more, he sighed and clarified, “Other _name_ , then. You should have two, one on each arm. One in red, the other in gold. Your enemy—” He pointed at the name on Sandy’s wrist; it burned under his scrutiny. “—and your soulmate.”

She shook her head, bared her other arm. Empty, naked, and plain. The _normal_ one, her brothers and sisters used to call it, and the memory made her chest feel too tight.

“Just one,” she said, rather needlessly. “One name. Mine.”

Startled, the Scholar grabbed her empty arm with both hands. Sandy recoiled, pulling away sharply and hissing danger; demon or god, monk or no monk, it made little difference when she was cornered and frightened. She would take both of his hands off with her teeth if he touched her again like that, and she would not think twice of what it might make her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, too sweet and too full of sorrow; somehow, his softness hurt nearly as much as a thrown stone. “May I take a look, please? To only have one soulmark is... well. From my limited understanding of the subject, it’s not very common.”

Sandy didn’t particularly care if it was common or not, but she nodded as if she did, and reluctantly let him take her arm again. Somewhat gentler this time, with softness in the pads of his fingers, like he knew how long it had been since she’d last been touched without violence, by fingertips made of flesh and blood rather than the steel-sharp edge of a blade or the blunt heft of a bludgeon.

He ran his hands over her skin for a moment or two, as though testing for a broken bone, then let her go and leaned back on his haunches with a puzzled, scholarly frown. “Fascinating.”

Sandy prodded at her wrist. “Nothing fascinating here.”

He didn’t argue, but she could tell he wanted to. It made her feel uncomfortable, self-conscious. Her old instincts rose up again, keen and fierce; she wanted to get out of there, to run away and hide in the shadows, to close her eyes and her mind and pretend she’d never set foot in the place at all, pretend she’d never laid eyes on a monk who called himself a scholar.

He wouldn’t have stopped her, she knew, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to move. She sat there for a short while, watching the expressions dart across his face as he studied her, picking her apart piece by piece without ever raising a hand. First her face, then her right wrist — the one with her own name inked in blood — and then at last the empty space on her left. Back and forth and back again, like he was trying to unlock the secrets of the world through the colours on and absent from her skin.

Then at long last, just when she couldn’t bear the scrutiny another second, he took a deep breath and said, “I think I might be able to help you.”

Sandy peered into his face, searching for signs of dishonesty or deception and finding none. Curiosity, yes, and a strange sort of eagerness, like perhaps he saw her as more of a subject for study than an actual person, but certainly none of the malice she was used to seeing in humans. He was sincere, truly. Even she, with her limited understanding of kindness and compassion, could figure out that much.

So why, then, did the word ‘help’ sound so terrifying?

*

He told her about the resistance.

It was difficult, messy, and it wouldn’t stick in her head. He had to break the word down to its separate syllables and spell it out three times before she was able to repeat it back to him, much less make any sense of what it meant in context. A world without demons, with the gods back where they belonged. 

She had a hard time grasping it, and not just because she had a hard time grasping most things. Just a few short hours ago she’d thought she was one of the demons they wanted to destroy; she’d never heard of gods or soulmarks or any of the dozen other things the Scholar spoke about with such awe and reverence. Now, all of a sudden, everything was upside-down and back-to-front, and she could not keep up with all the twists and turns. Her head ached with the effort of rebuilding the world and everything she’d thought she knew about it.

“You can help us,” the Scholar told her, when he’d finished explaining it for the hundredth time. “And we can help you as well.”

He touched her wrist again, the one with her name, and she felt the skin grow warmer under his touch. Not hot, not like it got when she touched it or looked at it. Just warm. Like he was trying to heal the damage her name had done to her soul, like he thought being a monk gave him some kind of divine power over gods or demons or... whatever she was.

She pulled away, covered the mark with her hand. Hated the way it felt under her palm, warmth turning to heat instantly, the burn pulsing like a second heartbeat.

“How?” she asked. “You explained it to me. Fated to be my own worst enemy. And I have no soulmate.”

“Yes,” the Scholar said, quiet but intense. “And we may not be able to change either of those things. But we can at least _try_.”

He stood up, then, shuffling off into a small side-room like that was the end of the whole conversation, leaving Sandy alone with her thoughts, her hated name, and what felt like a thousand lifetimes of new and confusing information.

Her head hurt. Her wrist hurt. She looked down at it, at her name in glittering red, and she wondered how the fate thing worked. Did she hate herself because the mark bore her name, or did the mark bear her name because it had always known she would hate herself? Would her parents have given her a different one if they’d known what it meant, or would they have simply abandoned her as a newborn instead, leaving her alone and lost, perhaps to take the name for herself when she grew old enough to read it?

It was always going to be hers, she supposed. One way or another the name would always find her, and with it the self-hatred and violence she couldn’t swallow down.

She didn’t know how to be a god. She didn’t know how to connect with the name on her wrist, to see it as a part of her fate, or destiny, or anything more than just _her_ , horrible and hateful.

She knew how to be a demon. She knew how to be despised — by herself, by the world, by everything — how to be feared and reviled, how to live every day in constant pain. This was easy; this had been her life and breath and blood for as long as she could remember.

But to be a god? To be good, to be brave, to be kind? To be something that people weren’t frightened of and didn’t hate? To be something that _she_ didn’t hate?

No. No, she couldn’t.

It was written on her skin. Inescapable, indelible. Her soulmark, her enemy, herself. The only truth she understood.

The Scholar had a sad, thoughtful look on his face when he returned. He sat back down beside her, setting down a quill and inkwell, and studied her again for a short moment.

“The resistance has a plan,” he told her in a hushed voice, as though afraid of being overheard, even in the safety of his own monastery. “We have a long way to go yet, but when the time is right we’ll need all the help we can get. I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to, but having a god on our side, able to face demons without the risk of death we mortals face... it would be an immeasurable asset.”

Sandy shifted uncomfortably. “Until you told me otherwise,” she said, stumbling over ‘otherwise’, “I thought I _was_ a demon. I don’t... I don’t know how to fight them.”

“We can teach you some things. We have knowledge, resources. We can help you to understand a little more of who you are and where you came from, help you to develop your gifts. If you’re willing, you could learn a great deal from us.”

Sandy wasn’t sure she was willing, wasn’t sure she wanted to put any part of herself into the hands of humans; she felt vulnerable and scared, and the only thing she knew she wanted to do was hide.

Oh, but to _learn_...

That wasn’t something she’d ever had in abundance. Growing up, education was sporadic and very sparse, and by the time she was old enough to seek out knowledge for herself she’d already been in hiding for so long she couldn’t remember how to ask for it. To learn about herself, where she’d come from and what she was...

She looked down at her name. Her soulmark.

“Can you really teach me not to hate myself?” she asked in a whisper. “Not to be my own enemy?”

“I don’t know,” the Scholar admitted softly. “Fate is a complicated thing. I am no god, and my knowledge is rather limited.” He winced as Sandy’s face fell, then took her gently by the hand. “But I am certainly willing to try.”

He reached across, then, and took up the quill. Sandy watched, mouth suddenly dry, as he dipped it into the well, the ink staining the tip a strange yellowish gold.

“What are you doing?” she squeaked.

“Attempting to help you.” He turned her hand over, still ever so gentle, and let his palm rest for a moment on the empty skin there. Sandy hid her other hand — the marked one — behind her back, feeling self-conscious and not really understanding why. “As I said, fate is a complicated thing. But there’s no harm in trying to give it a helping hand, now, is there?”

So saying, he touched the quill to her skin, and wrote.

Sandy held herself still until he was finished. It was hard. Her branded wrist was burning, the mark seeming to scream for her attention, demanding and commanding and compelling her to break free and run away.

She didn’t, though. Wouldn’t. Pushed herself, a little, to look up at this strange, generous human and try to trust.

He was breathing heavily when he finally pulled away. Like the effort of writing was a great strain somehow, like he’d done something more than simply write—

One word?

Sandy blinked down at it, the letters still wet under the dim candlelight, not truly golden, but likely as close as mortal ink could get.

But the word...

She read it out loud. Tried to, anyway. Slowly and carefully, sounding out the syllables and stumbling over them. It had been a long time since she’d had anything to read but her own name.

“Trip... Tripi... taka?”

“ _Tripitaka_.” He leaned in to study his handiwork, pride and worship on his face. “It’s a holy name. One of great significance, to gods and mortals alike.”

Sandy ran it over her tongue. It was difficult to say, but it didn’t hurt like her own name did; it settled behind her teeth, at the back of her mouth, like the memory of a hot meal.

“Tripitaka.” She swallowed it down, tried again. “Tripitaka.”

“Yes. Excellent.” He leaned back, gazing up to the heavens as though in prayer. “One day, when our plan is ready, a monk bearing this name will find you. He will have a terrible burden to carry, and he’ll need all the help he can get.”

Sandy touched the writing on her wrist. The ink, still wet smudged slightly, the letters seeming to blur and bend under her fingers, distorting but only just a little. She could still make them out, could still trace their shapes with her tongue and her mind.

“Gold ink,” she murmured, and tried to recapture some of the too-many things the Scholar had tried to teach her. “Like the one for a soulmate.”

He smiled. “You learn well.”

Another compliment. Sandy squirmed, uncomfortable. “Is that what you’re trying to do?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. “Give me a soulmark?”

He shook his head. “I can’t do that,” he told her, still gentle but a little more firmly now. “I’m no god, and even if I were it would be far beyond my abilities.”

She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Her stomach churned with the contradicting emotions. “Oh.”

“I cannot change your fate,” he said, smiling with warmth and sadness. “But I can help you find _faith_.”

“Faith.” It was a strange word; it made her heart itch. “In a monk?”

“In a monk. In our cause. In the future.” He spread his arms, like a shrug and an invitation all at once. “The name carries many meanings. Find one that speaks to you. Dedicate yourself to it. Find a purpose for yourself, and perhaps your soul will find its purpose too.”

It felt like a lot. Too much, nearly. Sandy’s head ached from trying to fit it all inside. Her soulmark hurt too, the real one, the one with her name. She looked down at it, blinking rapidly; the red letters seemed to flicker slightly, the colour a little less vibrant than it was before. A little paler, a little faded, like her skin after too many years out of the sun. Like perhaps its power was weakening too.

Or maybe that was just the light, flickering and throwing shadows.

“I...” She swallowed hard, feeling dizzy. “I can try?”

The Scholar nodded. “That’s all anyone can hope for.”

And he handed over the quill and inkwell, small but heavy, like they were the most precious gifts in all the world.

To Sandy, who had never received a gift in her life, and who had never known faith of any kind, they surely were.

*

She cherished them.

The quill and the ink, the new name on her soulless wrist, the faith and the lessons the Scholar gave her, all of it. Everything.

He taught her a little more in the weeks that followed. What she was capable of, what her body could do, how to use her powers for good. How to survive, how to defend herself without hurting humans. How to turn her talents to hurting demons instead, to slaying the monsters she once believed were her brethren.

That was a difficult lesson. Confusing, and more painful than she’d care to admit. But she learned and she grew, and she became very, very good at it.

She reapplied the ink every day. Dutiful, diligent, tracing the Scholar’s fine lettering with as much care and devotion as she had in her. It never stuck, of course, water and time washing it away, but whenever it started to fade she added another layer, sustaining it, keeping it present and visible and wonderful, until she could no longer remember a time when it wasn’t there.

It wasn’t a true soulmark. She knew that, even without the Scholar’s gentle reminders, but it brought her comfort as if it was. It gave her a purpose, a reason to keep breathing, to keep surviving, to try to become something better than the wretched creature she’d always been.

It made her want and wish and ache, made her feel alive. And even if it wasn’t really a soulmark, she had faith, blessed and beautiful, that one day perhaps it would be.

And so she waited.

And as she waited, for the first time in her life, she _lived_.

*

Then, at long last, he arrived.

The tiniest monk she’d ever seen. Possibly the tiniest human.

And the first thing she did was put her weapon to his throat.

It wasn’t quite the moment of enlightenment she’d been hoping for.

High-voiced and harmless, but she didn’t know it was _him_. She’d never seen his face before, and the Scholar hadn’t told him what sort of a monk he would be. Besides, he was speaking to a demon as though they were friends; what was she supposed to think? Even now, trusting humans was difficult, but trusting her eyes was easy. Experience had taught her, far better than the Scholar ever could, to believe in her instincts, the parts of her that could sense something amiss in people’s behaviour.

How could she have known that this tiny little monk was _her_ tiny little monk? How could she have known that he carried the name she had wrapped so tightly around her heart and soul?

So she growled and prowled, stalked and cornered him, hunted like the wild animal she still partly was. And she asked him his name — no, _demanded_ his name — and he stammered and ducked his head and avoided her eye, and she was ready, really and truly ready, to drive the weapon home—

But then he said it.

 _Tripitaka_.

And Sandy’s world seemed to shatter into a thousand pieces.

Her heart—

Her _soul_ —

She hit her knees, praying and babbling, still so unaccustomed to conversation with humans or anything else. He stared at her like she was something twisted, a creature not of this world, still seeing the demon they always saw, the same demon she herself still saw sometimes when the light from the world above caught the sewer water and threw her own reflection at her, when her soulmark — the real one — burned.

“I waited,” she whispered. “For so long, I waited for you.”

He stared at her, blank and confused, so she rolled up her sleeve to try and explain. No words, she’d never been any good at those, she tried to show him the name she’d tended so carefully, the glistering golden letters, the gift the Scholar had given her. She held it up to the light, hoping that he would recognise his own name and understand what it meant.

But her skin was dirty and sweat-damp, and she hadn’t had time yet to reapply the ink and make it new again; it was smudged and smeared, the delicate lettering distorted beyond all recognition. _Gone_ , nothing left but a blur of ruined yellow-gold ink.

“Um.” Tripitaka gave a polite cough. “What am I looking at?”

Sandy swallowed tears. Turned away and let the shadows be her shelter, as they had been for so many years.

“Nothing.” She coughed as well, ragged and a bit hoarse. “Doesn’t matter. Not important.”

But it was. It was, it was.

Tripitaka was frowning when she turned back to him, visibly befuddled. “Okay...”

Sandy tried to quiet her aching heart, her aching soul. “I’m supposed to help you.”

That got his attention. He narrowed his eyes, like she’d uttered some magical spell.

“You know about our mission?”

A thousand different answers ricocheted through her mind, and for a long, awkward moment Sandy didn’t know which one to pick. The Scholar had prepared her for many things, but not for this, the moment she finally got to meet the name on her wrist, the only name she’d ever heard that didn’t cause her pain. She didn’t know how to speak to people at all, really, and she certainly didn’t know how to speak to _him_ ; how could she put into words the few small things she did know? How could she—

She never got the chance to try.

A clanging sound, a sneak-attack, and then she was dying.

 _Dying_. The moment she’d waited for, here at long last, and now she was dying.

No wonder she didn’t have a soulmate. No wonder the Scholar’s golden ink had never seeped into her skin, no wonder it had never become true. She wouldn’t live long enough to see it.

She wanted to look up, even as the world closed in, wanted to see his face in the moment she breathed her last, to die drowning in all the things she might have been if only she’d had the chance. She wanted so badly for his face, his name, to be the last thing she saw, but she couldn’t lift her head with the Monkey King’s staff bearing down onto her throat, and she couldn’t open her eyes with the weight of so much pain, and she couldn’t fight and she couldn’t move and she couldn’t—

And then she heard his voice, as clear as a song, chanting—

And her wrist, still smeared and stained with ink, grew suddenly warm—

And the staff grew slack on her throat as Monkey howled—

And she hit the ground, gasping, heaving, retching, but _alive_.

She was trembling when he helped her up, shaking and shivering and unable to stop. And perhaps some part of it was the shock of being not dead, but a bigger part was the heat on her wrist, scorching and searing and, impossibly, not hurting.

Her vision blurred as she looked down, squinting and straining in the dark, but she didn’t need light or clarity to see the glister of perfect gold, to recognise the shapes of the letters she’d committed to memory so long ago, or to recognise the name she’d traced again and again, the name that had given her strength and succour more times than she could ever count.

 _Tripitaka_.

Glimmering and glittering, gleaming and golden and _real_.

She choked, tears stinging her eyes, clogging her throat.

Tripitaka steadied her and whispered, “It’s okay. You’re alive.”

And Sandy choked again, on the truth of it, and sobbed.

*

A little later, when she’d saved their lives and brought them out into the fading daylight, Monkey asked for her name.

No.

He asked for something to _call her_.

It wasn’t the same thing at all.

She could have chosen anything. Any name, any word, anything. She could cast it aside, the name she’d worn for so long, the blood-red enemy branded onto her wrist, could find a new name for herself, one that she didn’t hate, one that didn’t hate her in return. She could become someone new, someone good and kind and helpful. She could become a god in truth, free at last from the curse of being called a demon, from the curse of being called _Sandy_.

The universe had cracked itself open all around her, opportunity whispering in her ear, the promise of a kinder, gentler life from here on. The life she might have had if she’d been born in a different time, a different world, if she’d been born with a different name on her skin, or on her father’s tongue.

She could throw her old self away, toss it into the wind and never think of it again. Never have to feel frightened or violent when she saw her reflection in water or glass, never have to hate the sound of her voice or the sight of her haunted eyes. She could destroy the demon inside herself, could burn it to ashes like all monsters should be burned, and forge a new identity on its cooling ashes. She could—

But she wouldn’t.

She was who she was. Who she’d been born, who she would die. Her name was _hers_ , and she would not cast it aside now, no matter the pain it caused. She had lived with all her life, and without the balance of another soulmark on her other side. With no gold to temper the red, she had survived and she had grown and she had _become_. She had earned the gold, earned the mark, earned _Tripitaka_ , and she would not deny the suffering that had brought him to her.

“Sandy,” she said, and let the pain wash over her like a cleansing, purifying fire. “My name is Sandy.”

***


End file.
